


you know i didn't want to (have to haunt you)

by profesh_hipster



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, M/M, Not Really Character Death, but it looks like it is, edelgard support spoilers if you squint but not really, your honor they need therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28836564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profesh_hipster/pseuds/profesh_hipster
Summary: “Did you see Felix? During the battle?” Sylvain asks, not meeting her eyes and instead staring at his hands as they twist together in his lap.If she’s surprised at all by the sudden, unprompted question, Ingrid does a good job of not showing it. “No, why? If you were worried about him, I’m sure he can handle himself. He can’t be far behind you on his way to Fraldarius.”“No, that’s not—I mean, did youseehim? Like, at all?” Sylvain meets her eyes, hoping he can convey his worry without having to actually voice it, without having to saywhat if Felix is dead, what if he broke our promise?—Felix deserts the Blue Lions the morning of the Battle of Garreg Mach and is presumed dead. He and Sylvain find each other again, five years later, in the last place Sylvain would ever expect.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77





	you know i didn't want to (have to haunt you)

**Author's Note:**

> as a quick note, there is some brief discussion of suicide/self-harm, so if you’d like to skip that, i put ** marks at the beginning and end of that paragraph :) please take care of your own mental health!! know your limits, friends.
> 
> this is unbetaed, any mistakes are my own and i'm deeply sorry, i've been working on this obsessively for a week straight and needed to be done with it
> 
> the title of this is from “my tears ricochet” by taylor swift. speaking of, i made a playlist of songs feat. too many taylor swift songs that made me emo while writing this fic, you can listen to it here: [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6hfACTvO3IgnOYHj6kB14U?si=jUY6_Sp8TvWxB6YsZVNgqg)

Sylvain isn’t sure how he goes so long without noticing—it all happens so fast. Between the professor disappearing, Edelgard attacking the monastery, and what looks like a fucking _dragon_ appearing from seemingly nowhere, he feels like he can’t blame himself for not noticing that Felix isn’t retreating with his battalion back to northern Kingdom territory until they’re deep into Charron and nearly to Galatea, and the late afternoon sun is barely warming the air around him. Now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember seeing Felix at the battle either—he hadn’t seen his friend since the night before, when—

He cuts off his own train of thought, feeling his face flush in the cool winter air. _Best to not think about that right now, there are more important things,_ he tells himself, _like where the_ fuck _Felix is._

“Hey,” he says, turning in the saddle of his horse to address the soldier next to him, “Have you seen Felix anywhere?”

The soldier gives him a confused look and shakes his head. “I’m not sure who you mean, sir.”

Sylvain had forgotten; this battalion was new, and they hardly knew his name, much less the names of his classmates. Well, were they his former classmates at this point? “The Fraldarius heir, a sword master. Dimitr—His Majesty gave us the order to fall back together, but I’m realizing now that I haven’t seen him all day.”

The soldier shakes his head again, and shrugs. “Sorry, sir, I haven’t seen him.” He confers with a few other soldiers around him, and they all seem to come to the same decision. “Seems no one has seen the Fraldarius heir since dinner yesterday.”

Sylvain frowns at the new information, his stomach flipping with worry. Had Felix been injured in battle? Typically, they fought somewhat near each other, at least, but everyone had been spread so thin during the battle, and Goddess knows he had been distracted while preparing for battle that morning, after he had woken up alone and confused in Felix’s bed.

At that thought, a memory comes back to him all at once. A memory of cold air rushing against his skin as he feels movement next to him, soft footsteps and the rustling of clothes and armor, a whispered, frustrated, _Sylvain_ , as he had clung to the warmth of a palm against his bare chest, a hesitant kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth, then the sound of a door closing softly before he had fallen back to sleep.

Right. He had left. That had to have been at least an hour before dawn, when Sylvain had reluctantly opened his eyes in the sunlight stretching through the dormitory window to find Felix’s room empty and the bed next to him cold. He’d thought it had been a dream at first, that Felix wouldn’t have left, not after what they had done and what they had gotten so close to admitting before falling asleep in each other’s arms. But then again, maybe he didn’t know his friend as well as he thought he did. And then the call of _To your stations! Enemy approaching from the south!_ from the monastery gatekeeper had prevented any other thought from crossing his mind.

“Sir?” The voice of the same soldier brings him out of his thoughts and back to the present moment.

“Sorry, yes?” He says, shaking his head briefly to rid his mind of thoughts of this morning, of thoughts of what was beginning to feel more and more like an ending, like a final parting kiss, than a beginning, than something he had been waiting for, as Sylvain had been selfishly hoping it was.

“We’re nearing Galatea manor, and it is close to dark.” With a start, Sylvain notices that it has indeed begun to grow dark, and after giving the men of his battalion a look over, notices the exhaustion evident in their expressions.

“Yes, absolutely. Let’s stop for the night.”

—

Ingrid finds him at the inn where he and his men stop for the night and insists that he come sleep in their spare bedroom and eat dinner with her family. After a quick word with his battalion, Sylvain and Ingrid head off. Ingrid, of course, had no trouble making it to Galatea hours before Sylvain on her pegasus, and has had time to bathe and rest from the battle and subsequent retreat, while Sylvain is still exhausted and covered in more grime than he would like to admit from the battle. He begs off for an hour or so to get cleaned up, then joins Ingrid and her family for dinner.

After dinner, Ingrid shows Sylvain to the guest room and stops in the doorway as he is gathering his things from the foot of the bed, where he had hastily thrown them before, when he had arrived. She takes a step back into the room and shuts the door quietly, staring at Sylvain while he tries to ignore the feeling of her eyes on the back of his head.

“Sylvain, are you—is everything okay?” Ingrid asks, hesitating a bit. “I mean, besides, you know _everything_. You seemed quiet at dinner—even my father commented on it to me as you were leaving.” Sylvain hears her step farther into the room, and he sighs, turning around and sitting on the edge of the bed. He motions for Ingrid to sit next to him and he waits for her to get comfortable before he speaks, thinking about how to best word the emotions going through his head.

“Did you see Felix? During the battle?” Sylvain asks, not meeting her eyes and instead staring at his hands as they twist together in his lap.

If she’s surprised at all by the sudden, unprompted question, Ingrid does a good job of not showing it. “No, why? If you were worried about him, I’m sure he can handle himself. He can’t be far behind you on his way to Fraldarius.”

“No, that’s not—I mean, did you _see_ him? Like, at all?” Sylvain meets her eyes, hoping he can convey his worry without having to actually voice it, without having to say _what if Felix is dead, what if he broke our promise_?

“I—Sylvain, I’m sure he’s fine. What is this about?”

He hears the words coming out of his mouth before he can stop them. “I’m in love with him,” he says, feeling his face flush at the inadvertent admission. "I think," he adds at the last minute, as a way to soften the blow of the revelation. Whether it’s for his own sake or for Ingrid’s, he's not sure. The look on Ingrid’s face immediately transforms into one of what can only be described as _pity_ and he forces himself to look away.

“Oh,” she says after a moment, quietly, and Sylvain glances up to find that she has looked away from him as well, the pity on her face changing into a blush of her own. She looks back to him and Sylvain quickly diverts his gaze again. “Did something happen?”

Memories of the night before come back once again, but they are different this time. Memories of he and Felix walking back to the dormitories after dinner, of Felix wordlessly pulling him into his room, pushing him up against the closed door and crowding into his space, the quiet admission, whispered into his neck of _can I kiss you?_ and Sylvain responding by threading his fingers through Felix’s hair and pressing their mouths together. He remembers the tenor of Felix’s voice the most, whispering _shhh_ and _fuck_ and _Sylvain, I—_ as Sylvain had to physically restrain himself from pouring out his heart to his childhood best friend while they fucked on his dormitory bed the night before what could be the last battle of either of their lives.

He forces himself back to the present, feeling the flush spread farther across his face and down his neck. “...Yes.” He meets Ingrid’s stare again, hoping that she’ll understand without him having to spell it out. The way she looks slightly disappointed and embarrassed speaks to her understanding of what happened. “We fell asleep after, but when I woke up, he was gone. He took his sword and armor with him, so he must have been going to a fight.”

Ingrid pauses, concern settling into her features. “He left?” Her tone speaks for itself; the _that doesn’t seem like him_ is implied.

“I know, which is why I’m worried. The men in my battalion say that no one has seen him since dinner last night.”

“He wouldn’t have left to take on Edelgard alone, would he?”

“No, I don’t think he’s that—” he tries to think of the best word to fill in the gap. _Rash? Stupid? Downright idiotic?_

“I agree,” Ingrid says, agreeing with Sylvain’s unvoiced thoughts. “I’m sure he’s okay, Sylvain.” She places a cautious hand on his knee with the words, and Sylvain realizes that tears are welling up in his eyes and spilling over and down his face without his consent.

“Yeah,” he says, huffing out a short laugh and stretching his arms behind his head in an attempt to break the tension in the room. “Um, thank you, Ingrid, but I think we’d better get some sleep.” He forces himself to yawn loudly, over exaggerating the feeling behind it.

“Of course. Good night, Sylvain,” she says, standing and walking to the door.

When she leaves, Sylvain quickly turns down the bed and douses his face with water from the washbasin in the room, feeling the tear tracks rinse away with the cool water. He extinguishes the lantern in the room and lies down, closing his eyes, but finds it impossible to sleep. His mind refuses to focus on anything but last night and every moment he had been sure that Felix had been about to say something, but when he looked over, his friend would just lay there, his mouth open, words seemingly frozen in the back of his throat. He spends the night thinking through impossible what if’s and could have been’s, getting little sleep.

—

Sylvain has little time in the year following the fall of Garreg Mach to consider whether or not Felix is alive, and if he is, where he is or what he’s doing. His father leaves him no time for sentimentalism between having him sit through war councils, organizing the split of military forces between the Sreng border and the capitol, and learning of the Archbishop’s disappearance and Dimitri’s apparent betrayal of his people. Sylvain draws his lance against too many of Cornelia’s men to count.

He does, however, find time to occasionally write letters to his friends and former classmates. He rarely hears back, but it feels better than nothing to send letters to his friends. He catches himself once writing _Dimitri,_ at the top of a roll of parchment and stares at the paper for what must be five whole minutes before he realizes what he wrote and crumples the entire sheet, not even bothering to salvage the unused portion.

But even with his meager letter-writing efforts to Annette, Ingrid, and the others, he puts off writing to Felix. It feels too—something, to just write him a letter, after the last time they had seen each other. Impersonal, maybe. Or impossible—the thought of Felix’s possible death still lingers, unwanted, at the back of his mind every day and he refuses to acknowledge it. Any letter he starts to his—friend? lover?—he struggles with the address. Should it read _Dear_ or _Dearest_ or just _Felix_? Maybe just simply, _Fe_? Somehow, they all feel too personal and yet not personal enough.

His eventual letter is just half a page full of crossed out lines and thoughts when his battalion eventually arrives more than a year after the war’s beginning at the Fraldarius dukedom for supplies and to meet with the war council made up of whichever nobles are left fighting for the Kingdom. They ride inside the castle’s protective outer walls, and Sylvain’s heart nearly stops when he sees that the typical deep teal tapestries that adorn the inner castle walls have been replaced by thick black cloth decorated with the Fraldarius crest—the colors of mourning.

A servant, Sylvain recognizes him as the head of the Fraldarius household, Renfred, greets them just inside the outer walls, flanked by several stable hands. “Good evening, Master Sylvain, I hope the journey here was not too difficult?” He sees the man’s eyes searching their ranks, his eyes flitting from one soldier to the next, before settling on Sylvain with what looks like disappointment. “Is this your entire party, then?” he asks, and Sylvain is too distracted by the signs of mourning around him to respond or even acknowledge that he’s been directly addressed.

Sylvain dismounts from his horse and grabs his pack before handing the reins over to one of the waiting stable hands. He’s finding it hard to look away from the black cloths thrown over every window and door in sight, a sick feeling twisting in his gut. His mind spins with possibilities: was Rodrigue killed in the coup at Fhirdiad? Surely he would have heard by now if that were the case—the coup was more than six months ago. His father had known where he was stationed, he would have sent word. Sylvain’s mind jumps to a worse possibility. Is Felix—? He refuses to let the thought cross his mind yet again. He’s brought back to the present when one of his soldiers responds to Renfred when he remains silent.

“Save for those we lost when we encountered three _Faerghus Dukedom_ —bastards, all of them—battalions on the way here,” a soldier, Brice, says from behind him, an edge to his voice that speaks to the exhaustion they’re all experiencing.

Sylvain steps in when he notices Renfred’s worried expression at the last minute, “Yes, we all arrived as safely as possible, thank you. My men would appreciate any housing and food you can provide,” he says, stretching out the sore muscles in his back and arms that come from riding horseback all day.

“Y-yes, of course, my lord,” he says, nodding for the stable hands to take the horses. “The stable hands can show your men to the soldiers’ barracks just outside of castle walls. Your quarters have been prepared at Lord Fraldarius’ request, Master Sylvain, but I’m afraid we are all spread quite thin these days.” Renfred begins to walk back towards the main castle entrance, gesturing in the direction of various places as he brings them up.

Sylvain nods, falling into step with him as they walk closer to the main castle entrance. “Yes, the war has affected us all.” He pauses for a moment, still considering the black shrouds replacing the typically bright Fraldarius colors. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but we’ve been cut off from most communication for more than six moons. Is Fraldarius in mourning?” he asks, trying to ignore the low swoop of fear that is swirling in his stomach and inching up his spine at the thought.

Renfred freezes at the door, looking back at Sylvain in what appears to be trepidation. “My lord, has no one told you?”

Sylvain resists the urge to repeat, frustrated, that _no, they’d been unable to receive correspondence for half a year,_ and simply fakes an uneasy smile at the other man and shrugs, saying, “Sorry, no.”

“My lord, no one has seen young Master Felix in nearly a year—he’s been presumed dead, killed in the battle at the monastery a year ago. Lord Fraldarius had hoped he travelled with your party, but his absence has confirmed what we feared.” Renfred offers a sympathetic smile to Sylvain, ushering him along through the corridors of the castle.

“I should—I should speak with Rodrig—Duke Fraldarius, I mean,” Sylvain hears himself saying, despite the ringing in his ears.

Renfred hesitates, then sighs. “O-of course, Master Sylvain. I’ll show you to his quarters.”

—

Sylvain barely remembers his conversation with Rodrigue—they’d discussed the war effort, Rodrigue had said that now both his sons had died a hero’s death, and Sylvain had felt bile rise in his stomach at that and excused himself. Any of the details beyond that were lost to his grief.

Now, he finds himself sitting through a war council with his father, Rodrigue, Gilbert, and other Kingdom nobles he’s never bothered to learn the name of, staring at the scaled-down map of Fódlan in front of him and wondering _if Felix is dead, what’s the point?_ They had made a promise, and Felix had broken it, so what was the point of this? The war? The council? Any of it?

Despite Sylvain knowing, reasonably, how irrational he is being, he can’t help but feel responsible for Felix’s death, at least somewhat. He should have been there, been more observant, more aware of where Felix was, the dangers he was facing. They hadn't even found the body—no doubt Edelgard had mangled any crest-bearing nobles who dared defy her beyond recognition in her pointless fucking war against the Church.

“Sylvain, what are your thoughts on this?” His father’s voice brings him out of his thoughts and back to the room, where he finds the rest of the war council staring at him expectantly.

“Sorry, my thoughts on what?” he asks, and the look the Margrave gives him in return is one that he knows means he’ll be hearing about his insubordination later. He sits up straighter in his chair, aware that the attention is on him, for the time being.

“On the potential of Fraldarius territory being absorbed into Gautier,” Rodrigue says, giving the Margrave a sharp look at his tone, then turning a slightly more sympathetic look towards Sylvain. His usual light blue cloak has been replaced by the black of mourning, and the circles under his eyes are more prominent than Sylvain thinks they’ve ever been.

Sylvain clears his throat before speaking, confused. “Why would we merge our territories?”

His father pinches the bridge of his nose. “Were you not listening? We are the last stronghold against Cornelia’s men and the Faerghus Dukedom; we must present a unified front. That is not to mention the issue of succession, now that the Fraldarius heir is dead, and the Duke’s brother unwilling to fight. We are doomed to fail in this war if we have no succession order in place.”

Sylvain bristles at the blunt mention of Felix’s death, then further at the implication that _he_ would eventually become the leader of their joined territories. “So you would have me take his place?” he asks, feeling his hands ball into fists against his knees under the table. “What right do I have? What right do _you_ have to make that decision?” He feels his voice getting louder with each word but can’t stop it. He stands from the table, pushing his chair back, suddenly feeling the need to _leave, get out_ , like the room is closing in around him.

As he storms from the room, he hears his father call out, ice dripping from his voice, “Sylvain, return to your seat _immediately_.” Followed by a quieter, “Give him time—” from Rodrigue before he slams the door shut behind him on his way out of the council room.

Fraldarius castle has always been familiar to him—it felt as though he spent as much time here as a child as he did at his own home—and the turns through the corridors come to him naturally. Before he even realizes where he is going, he finds himself at the door to Felix’s quarters, his hand hovering over the latch on the door. He forces down the hesitation and pushes into the room, checking down the corridor to ensure no servants have seen him enter.

Felix’s quarters look the same as when Sylvain was last here, years ago. Felix had always been...not exactly messy, but cluttered in a way that stressed Sylvain out to no end at the monastery, but seeing the clutter now, still scattered around the room, like he’d just been there, makes Sylvain’s heart clench painfully and his breath come too quickly for it to be comfortable. He walks to the writing desk, shoved into a corner near the fireplace, and glances over the letters spread messily across its surface. His fingers hesitate when he finds a letter from himself from years ago; he had written to Felix when he learned that they would both be attending the Officer’s Academy that spring.

When he picks his old letter up, a loose paper floats to the ground from underneath it, drawing Sylvain’s eye. He notices his own name written in Felix’s messy scrawl at the top of the page, and he pauses, intrigued. Felix had never replied to his letter announcing that they would see each other in the coming Great Tree Moon, and instead had simply sat next to Sylvain in the dining hall the first day of classes, passing his dessert over to Sylvain while Ingrid and Dimitri carried on a conversation across the table from them, so this letter piques his interest. Felix had never been one to write very long letters, but it was unlike him to put it off altogether.

Sylvain takes the letter addressed to himself and sits on the floor with his back against the foot of Felix’s bed, coughing at the dust his movement stirs up. He reads slowly, but can’t stop his eyes from dropping to the bottom of the paper, where he can see that Felix never finished or signed the letter.

 _Sylvain_ , it reads. _I, for one, am looking forward to learning, as one is meant to do at school, after all. Maybe you’ll see the benefits of training over skirt-chasing when surrounded by like-minded classmates, although I doubt something so small as the environment and classmates could change what is clearly an irrevocable part of your personality._

_Did you hear that the boar will be attending, too? I find it hard to believe they accepted that beast within their walls. I suppose he will be our house leader, but I will be following my own path, not his, and certainly not my old man’s._

_~~I wish that I could~~ _is crossed out below, then, _~~I miss~~_ is as well below that, followed finally by _See you soon_ and the letter ends only a quarter of the way down the page.

Sylvain frowns, reading back over the short letter again. He wishes there were more to it, that he could read more of his friend’s thoughts, but when he reads it again, the same words are there as before, no more and no less.

He places the letter back where he found it, touching the ink fondly before making his way quietly back to his own quarters, ready to face whatever punishment his father deems necessary for his earlier disrespect.

Once back in his room, Sylvain collapses onto the bed, suddenly exhausted. The events of the day catch up to him, and he remembers the events of the war room. A merge between the Gautier and Fraldarius territories? He could see the benefits, certainly.

His stomach rolls with the thought of his future if they win the war, full of fulfilling expectations, crest babies, a loveless marriage, just like his parents’. But something about it feels...lighter, almost, when he thinks of Felix, of how even in death, they are still close, even if it’s only that he will be taking on what would have been Felix’s responsibilities.

Then again, Sylvain finds himself thinking as he falls slowly asleep, this future is impossible if they lose the war, which is looking less and less likely by the day. Maybe he will join Felix in death on the battlefield, but either way, after all this is over, they will be together. And that thought brings Sylvain some level of peace as he finally drifts off to sleep.

—

His punishment, it turns out, is being sent to the front lines of the battle with little more than a day or two to prepare. His father says _if you are prepared to speak out against me, then you are prepared to die for your Kingdom_ , as if he hasn’t been putting his life on the line for the past year, as if the Kingdom hasn’t already essentially fallen, as if Dimitri wasn’t killed by the very men he has been sent out to fight.

In the past, he had been on mostly cleanup duty—his father had deemed the life of the Gautier heir too valuable to risk it in the fray of frontline battles. Now, however, he is the main general leading the charge against the Faerghus Dukedom that has been slowly infringing on their borders from the south and west.

The main concern on the frontlines is the lack of knowledge of the enemy. There are rumors, of course, but Sylvain finds it hard to believe any of them—they feel more like horror stories than anything else, things exaggerated by late nights, dark forests, and too much liquor. His men tell him of a general in Edelgard’s army—an undefeated sword master who is as deadly as they are swift through the battlefield—and Sylvain urges them that Petra—because this must be a story about Petra—cannot be _that_ frightening, she had always been so sweet back at the Academy. His men assure him that this general is anything but _sweet_ , but Sylvain puts it out of his mind and swears to burn that bridge when he comes to it on the battlefield. He counts himself lucky to avoid this rumored undefeated sword master throughout his various battles.

Other rumors are whispered around campfires at night, of a deadly assassin who murders entire Dukedom battalions while they sleep. His men tell him this must be His Highness, back from the dead to avenge the wrongdoings of the Empire, no one else has the power or the knowledge of the land to be capable of such feats. Sylvain brushes them off. His friends are dead, there’s no avoiding it. 

** War is all he knows as he goes from day to day, month to month throughout what used to be Blaiddyd, slaughtering battalion after battalion. The Lance of Ruin pulses and glows at his side as he cuts down five and ten men at once. He has brushes with death in nearly every battle, but each time he finds that he almost wants it to happen, wants to feel the rush that comes with narrowly avoiding death, wants to see what happens if he pursues that rush further. He refuses healing with some of his more minor injuries, allowing a particularly nasty gash from an axe to scar across his forearm where his armor and the Lance of Ruin failed to protect him. Each time he has a near miss with death he wonders, _is this what he felt, what he experienced, when—?_ But stops himself from finishing the thought; he’d rather ignore this problem for now, thanks. **

His father refuses his requests to come home, to allow himself a break from the constant fighting, so he throws himself into it without another thought. He concerns himself with nothing other than supplies, weapon repairs, and the next battle for what must be months on end, until he suddenly realizes that a year has passed full of nothing but constant fighting without his knowledge or permission.

Now that his location is at least vaguely known to his friends and former classmates, he receives letters from them, updating him on Ashe’s service to House Rowe and Annette’s life with her Uncle north of Fhirdiad, but he refuses to return any of them. Ingrid comes to visit him on the frontlines on several occasions, hunting down his encampment from the back of her pegasus, but Sylvain refuses to see her every time, citing exhaustion from whichever battle he’s just come from, shooing the messenger out of his tent and laying back on his bedroll, staring at the ceiling of his tent until his eyelids are too heavy for him to keep open, as he does every night.

He refuses to see her mainly because he knows he’s not doing okay, and he doesn’t need Ingrid to tell him that to his face. He’s always been more self-aware than his friends gave him credit for. Everything he does has been for his father’s sake—the constant dates while at the academy were only to appease his constant nagging about passing down his crest to his eventual heir, he only fights on the front lines because he had been ordered to by his father—and the one thing that had been _his_ , his love for Felix, had been ripped away from him by the war that his father had sent him to die fighting in. He knows he’s self-destructing, and he doesn’t need the look of pity on Ingrid’s face to add to the guilt he already feels.

He rarely remembers his dreams, but when he does, they make his heart ache in a way that he can’t decide how he feels about. They’re filled with the battlefield, then flashes of Fraldarius blue, then Felix standing in front of him, opening his mouth to speak. He always wakes up just before he hears his voice, each time somehow more exhausted than when he fell asleep.

The morning after Ingrid’s most recent attempted visit, four and a half years into the war, when Sylvain can feel that the Kingdom is on its last legs and he’s been fighting for far too long, Ingrid forces her way into his tent, anger settled deep into her features. He looks up from where he is kneeling next to his bedroll, preparing his armor for the day and quirks an eyebrow at her, looking back to his task without a word.

“Sylvain,” she says, tense.

“Ingrid,” he replies, moving to put on the breastplate of his armor.

“You can’t keep ignoring us,” she says, crossing her arms from where Sylvain can see her from the corner of his eye.

“I can do what I want,” he says, still refusing to look at her as he adjusts his greaves and gauntlets.

She sighs, taking half a step forward, then seeming to think better of it and staying near the flap entrance. “I’m sorry,” is all she says, quiet. Sylvain pretends he doesn’t hear her, doesn’t want to address the issue. 

When Sylvain refuses to speak again, Ingrid sighs, then moves to leave the tent, speaking over her shoulder as she leaves. “The millennium festival is in three months. Annette and Mercedes wanted me to invite you. Will you be there?”

Sylvain looks up, meeting her eyes for the first time, and he notices with a start that her hair has been cut short, resting just past her chin now. He wonders how else his friends have changed, wonders if he should have tried to actually write them back. “I’ll try,” he says, but they both hear the note in his voice that shows how little he means it, and Ingrid sighs and leaves.

—

The thing is, he _wants_ to go to the festival, but the thought of seeing his friends after all these years, or rather, the thought of _them_ seeing _him_ after all these years makes him hesitate. Either way, he receives a letter from his father a little more than two weeks before the millennium festival had been set to happen, informing him that it is in his best interest to attend and assess the state of the other territories farther from what has now become Gautier-Fraldarius territory, as they have been cut off from many of their major supply and communication lines by the forces of the Faerghus Dukedom.

So, he splits his troops, sending the main force back to regroup at what was once Fraldarius, and travels with his new, smaller battalion to what is left of Garreg Mach Monastery. His life already feels so bizarre, so finding the _professor_ there, of all people, fighting bandits alongside Dimitri just like five years hasn’t passed seems close to normal. When the fighting is over and they’ve regrouped in the crumbling cathedral, he can’t help the way his eyes flick over his classmates, looking for a familiar head of inky black hair drifting on the edges of the group, his arms crossed, fingers tapping idly on the hilt of his sword. His traitorous heart clenches when he hears footsteps behind them entering the cathedral, but the cadence is wrong, the steps are too heavy, and it’s only Gilbert, come to join them from the former Fraldarius territory.

They spend the day catching up and making battle plans as they work on clearing the rubble from the abandoned monastery—he’s assigned to clearing the worst of it from the cathedral with Ashe and is just lifting one of the larger boulders when Ashe asks, breaking what Sylvain had considered to be a companionable silence with, “Hey, have you seen Felix anywhere?” he sounds genuinely confused, not like Ashe could be malicious anyway, which is the only thing that keeps Sylvain from dropping the boulder onto his own foot in shock and anger.

He grunts, adding the boulder the pile they’ve made before responding. “He's dead,” he says, trying to ignore the bad taste the words bring to his mouth. Five years later, he still finds it hard to accept.

“I’m so sorry,” Ashe says, quiet, from where he’s dragging what’s left of the pews back to their rightful locations. “I know you two were close.”

Sylvain wants to curse at him, to ask him _what do you know of our friendship_? But he can’t do that to Ashe, not after he lost his adoptive father just before the war, then was forced out of House Rowe when it fell to the Empire. “Thanks,” is all he manages, and they continue their work in silence.

—

As soon as he is able, he writes to his father and informs him of the reunion at Garreg Mach and of Dimitri’s survival of the coup from five years ago, although he leaves out the king’s present mental state—it doesn’t feel relevant, especially when he feels the he’s in a similar place. After nearly four straight years of battle on the frontlines of the war, he can feel himself slipping, so to speak. It’s just to say, he understands where Dimitri is coming from, at least, and putting it in writing, even if it's about someone else, feels like too much of a request for help, something that Sylvain has never done.

The next months are spent between battles, watching Dimitri slowly descend more and more into madness, and ignoring that he has to walk past Felix’s empty room every night to get to his own. Byleth trains them all, expanding their abilities, and he throws himself into his magical training, nearly mastering dark magic, and becoming decent by his own standards at healing magic as well.

What would be Felix’s birthday falls just days before they are set to march for Ailell, the Valley of Torment, to meet with Rodrigue and gain reinforcements, and Sylvain finds himself drunk, standing outside the door to Felix’s room several hours past midnight that night. He tries to force himself to walk away from the door, or to go inside, but all he can do is collapse to the floor in front of it, his back pressed against the wood of the door behind him, and sleep. He wakes up the next morning with an awful crick in his neck and a hangover, and avoids the pitying stares from his friends as they prepare to march to the Valley of Torment.

He thinks his life can’t get any more bizarre, but Rodrigue finds them after Sylvain’s letter presumably reaches his father and acts as if Dimitri has always been this way, as if nothing is different, and they encounter Ferdinand on the battlefield at the Great Bridge of Myrddin and Sylvain watches as Dimitri cuts down their former classmate without so much as a thought. Lorenz is luckier and joins their forces when Byleth defeats him, retreating to their temporary camp on the Alliance side of the bridge. Sylvain thinks surely, this is the end of the surprises, but Dedue is suddenly there as well, alive and protecting Dimitri like always, as if nothing has changed.

The next month, they march to Gronder Field, and Sylvain feels sick for a reason he can’t quite place. Maybe it’s the way that Edelgard lights the central hill on fire with her soldiers still there, or the way Bernadetta’s screams pierce through the battlefield as she’s engulfed in flames.

Sylvain spends most of the battle in a haze, striking down countless men from the Alliance and the Empire, although he manages to avoid crossing paths with any of his former classmates. From what he can see of the battlefield, it looks like Dimitri has no problem killing his former classmates.

What feels like days, but must only be a few hours later at most, the sounds of battle have died down around him, and he regroups his battalion so they can make their way back to camp to see how the others fared. It appears as if Edelgard’s troops, or what’s left of them, have retreated, so he thinks they’ve won, but Byleth had kept him to the rear of the battle this time. Sylvain thinks they know that he would welcome the opportunity to sacrifice himself for an ally, and is trying to keep him alive. He’s not sure if he’s grateful or just exhausted at the effort they’re putting into keeping them all alive.

He’s exhausted as they make their way back up the hill into the forest, but even so, Sylvain’s eyes catch on a splash of color near a tree to his right, and he pulls his horse to a stop to look closer at it. His stomach flips, and his heart picks up in anger as he recognizes the color as the teal of the Fraldarius house colors, too dark to have come from any of Rodrigue’s clothes. Besides, this forest had been occupied by Edelgard’s troops, and Rodrigue wouldn’t have had a reason to pass through here.

“Hey,” he calls to a soldier nearby, never taking his eyes from the spot in the trees, “Do you see that?” He points to the spot, where it looks like the flash of teal is clinging to a low-hanging tree branch like an oddly colored leaf. His eyes have played tricks on him before—he needs to be sure he’s not imagining this.

The soldier comes to a stop, pushing up the visor on his helmet and squinting into the forest. “Yes, sir. Looks like a ripped cloth, or something.”

Sylvain frowns. He would know that color of blue anywhere—it has haunted his dreams for the past five years, after all. “Let the others know that I stayed behind,” he says, pulling on his horse’s reins and steering towards the edge of the forest. “I’ll catch up.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier calls to his back as Sylvain nudges the horse into a trot, leaning over his neck to see—yes, that’s definitely the blue of the Fraldarius Dukedom, much brighter than the muted blue of Rodrigue’s cloak. _Who would_ dare _wear such a color_? He seethes at the thought of a former classmate disrespecting Felix in such a way when they had been the ones responsible for his death in the first place.

Sylvain pulls at the piece of cloth, and it comes free easily—it looks like a torn corner of a cloak that had gotten caught on the branch as someone had walked past. On closer investigation, he notices stumbling tracks in the muddy grass, and it looks like blood and some black, chalky substance—burnt flesh, he realizes, from when Edelgard lit the central hill on fire—have been dragged against the grass, leading deeper into the trees. He dismounts from his horse, tying the reins loosely to the same low-hanging branch he’d found the cloth on, and follows the path of blood and burnt flesh, his stomach rolling as the smell and his anger both become stronger.

 _Who from the Empire would wear this color_ , he wonders, clutching the scrap of fabric tighter in his fist, seeing visions of former classmates flash before him. Caspar? Dorothea? Hubert? Maybe—Sylvain will tear them to shreds when next he sees—

And suddenly, his thoughts are brought to an abrupt end, because he’s reached the end of the trail of blood and there, slumped against the base of a tree, with what looks like Bernadetta’s burnt corpse half resting in his lap, blood and tears mixing on his face and dripping down onto what’s left of Bernadetta’s purple hair, his own hair loose and barely reaching halfway down his neck, is Felix.

His cloak is ripped almost clear in two, and blood coats his armor across his shoulders, down his legs. His sword lies, unsheathed and discarded off to the side, with the hand not resting on Bernadetta’s corpse loosely grasping the hilt. Sylvain thinks that if he hadn’t spent the first 19 years of his life as close friends with Felix, he might not recognize him for all the blood and gore spattered across his face, obscuring the typically sharp cut of his features.

Sylvain has spent the past five years thinking over what he would say, if he ever saw Felix again. Things like _I love you_ and _Why did you leave?_ And _But I thought you were dead, I thought you broke our promise_ all flash through his mind, but somehow, impossibly, the thing that makes it past his lips is just, “You cut your hair.” He sounds almost disappointed, when his words make it past the almost deafening shock and to his own ears.

Felix looks up and says, “What?” and immediately starts coughing up blood, the bright red of the fresh blood adding to the dried mess already there.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sylvain says, kneeling down next to him and checking him over more thoroughly. Almost immediately, he notices the blood oozing out of a gash through Felix’s abdomen, staining his dark blue shirt an even darker purple. “Goddess, Felix, what happened?” he mumbles, tearing more at the already large rip in the shirt and pressing his hands to the wound, thanking the Goddess that Byleth had forced him to become at least passable in healing magic.

Felix winces as the healing magic courses through him, then all at once, shoves Sylvain back with all the force he can gather. All together, Sylvain barely budges, but his hands are dislodged from Felix’s wound and the spell breaks.

“Bern—” Felix coughs again, but no blood comes up, which makes something loud and painful in Sylvain’s heart quiet just a bit. He pushes Sylvain toward Bernadetta, wincing with the effort, and Sylvain sits back on his heels, considering the wound on Felix’s torso with what he hopes Mercedes and Byleth would call a practiced gaze. It’s no longer oozing blood, but the wound is still open, giving Sylvain a view of tissue and flesh, torn apart by some weapon or other. He’ll live, at least, so long as it doesn’t begin to bleed again. He thinks Mercedes will be able to heal it completely, provided they can make it back to camp.

Felix’s words finally register with Sylvain, and he looks down to Bernadetta, who is barely recognizable except for the wisps of purple hair still visible in patches on her scalp. Her sniper’s armor is burnt and cracked along her torso, and the flesh is burnt and blistered. Sylvain thinks back to the quiet girl he once knew at the Academy, to the girl who would run from any conversation at all, and his heart aches with anger at Edelgard.Sylvain places a hand on her forehead, where some skin is still visible, and winces.

“She’s dead, Fe.” He arranges himself more comfortably on the grass, close enough to Felix that he can help should he show any signs of a more serious injury. _He used to be dead_ , his mind supplies helpfully, and he speaks without thinking, “We thought _you_ were dead.”

“Ha,” Felix says, leaning his head back against the tree behind him, closing his eyes with a groan. Sylvain isn’t sure which statement it’s a response to, but Felix makes it clear when he speaks after what might be ten seconds, a minute, or a full hour of silence. “I thought I was too,” he finally says, so soft that Sylvain wouldn’t have believed he said it, if he didn’t see Felix’s mouth shape the words for himself. “Or maybe I’m already dead. I thought the boar really had killed me, and this is my punishment. To see him one last time before I die.”

"Felix—" he starts, but either he isn't heard, or Felix isn't listening because he continues after barely pausing for a breath. His voice is breathy and tired, and Sylvain has to strain to hear him over the sounds of the forest and the dying fire, back on Gronder field. The feeling of panic sets in again when he realizes that Felix is hallucinating something or someone.

"I'm glad I saw him, at least." He opens his eyes again and looks forward, right at Sylvain, but it doesn’t seem like the words are addressed to him. He seems to look through him though, seeing something or someone that Sylvain can’t, and he starts when Felix makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat and coughs weakly again. This cough brings forward fresh blood, and Sylvain eyes find where Felix’s wound has begun to ooze blood again.

Sylvain isn’t sure how he does it—the last healing spell had taken nearly all of his energy—but he surges forward and presses his hands against the wound on Felix’s torso. He barely manages to find more energy and uses it to desperately help Felix cling to life, a thread that is just about to break. His heart pounds in his ears, and he feels his muscles shake with the exhaustion, but he can’t give up—

“Felix, come on, please,” he cries as Felix’s breaths become more and more rapid and shallow, his own tears mixing with the blood on Felix’s face. His hands _squelch_ in the blood as he desperately calls on more magic, and he feels the warmth come back to Felix’s body, just a little. Felix groans again, quiet, his eyelids fluttering, and Sylvain pulls back to look at him, presses a bloody hand to his face and strokes his cheekbone with his thumb. “Fe, look at me, please, stay awake.” His vision blurs as he feels Felix’s breath start to even out beneath his palms.

Felix’s eyes find his, finally, and he whispers, “Sylvain?” with startling clarity before falling unconscious.

—

He thinks he’s still in shock; he doesn’t remember getting back to camp, but he must manage to get them both atop his horse and back to the outskirts of the camp, because the next thing he remembers is a voice yelling out “Injured incoming!”, then Ingrid soothing his horse and gently taking the reins from Sylvain. She takes one look at them and curses, then yells for Mercedes and the professor, reaching up to maneuver Felix from where he’s slumped back onto Sylvain and into her grasp, one arm under his shoulders and the other under his knee. He’s still unconscious, and his head lolls back in a way that makes Sylvain’s stomach clench in fear.

“Are you hurt?” she asks after Felix is safely in her arms, and she doesn’t hesitate after he shakes his head to set off for the infirmary tent, meeting Mercedes and Byleth outside. Sylvain dismounts from his horse and throws the reins at a nearby soldier, telling the man to take it to the enclosure, before following as quickly as he can after Ingrid. He bursts into the infirmary, out of breath, and sees nothing but Felix, his shirt removed and Mercedes and Byleth kneeling on either side of the cot, their hands clasped together in prayer. A faint green glow emanates from the air around the cot, and Sylvain takes a step forward before Ingrid stops him, her arms crossed.

“You look like death, Sylvain,” she says, concerned. He realizes he’s covered in blood—his armor smeared with it and his hands stained dark purplish-brown. “What happened?” Ingrid steers him to an empty cot and forces him to sit. She stands between him and Felix, blocking his line of sight.

“I don’t know, he was just—there, and I healed him, but—” he says, trying to stare around Ingrid at where Felix lies. He can tell he’s not making sense, but he finds it hard to care. It feels as though his world has shifted the smallest bit to one direction, but he can’t figure out which direction, or recall what it even looked like before.

“Sylvain, he _died_. I went to the funeral,” she sounds as shocked as Sylvain has felt for the past hour.

“I know, I don’t know what happened,” he says. Obviously, Felix hasn’t been dead, but he can’t think of where he could have been for the past five years. None of the answers make sense. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Ingrid shakes her head, sighing in agreement with him. “You should get some rest and clean up,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll come get you if anything changes. I promise.”

Sylvain sighs, feeling the exhaustion hit him all at once. It feels like all of the fight leaves his body, and he wants nothing more than to be asleep in a warm bed before any of this had ever happened. “Do you promise?” he says, running a hand through his hair and wincing when he feels the drying blood from his hands smear through it.

Ingrid levels him with a look and says, “Yes, now _go_. Get some rest.” And he wearily rises from the cot and leaves for his own tent.

—

_Sylvain urges his horse into a canter, racing out to the front of his battalion and pulling short when he sees who stands across from him. The sounds of battle rage around him, but it all quiets as he stops, staring across from him where Felix stands, alone in the clearing, his sword dripping gore. Suddenly, Sylvain is no longer on horseback, and the Lance of Ruin is glowing between his hands, as he brandishes the weapon at the other man._

_“Hey Felix?” he hears himself say. “Remember when we were kids, and we made a promise about dying together?” The sounds of battle completely disappear, and Sylvain is faintly aware that they are alone now, in an eerily silent, ghostly recreation of Gonder Field._

_“I remember,” Felix replies, meeting his eyes from where they’re suddenly only an arms-length apart. The Lance of Ruin is inches away from Felix’s chest, but he doesn’t seem worried._

_“Well, it seems we’re about to kill each other,” Sylvain says, hearing the words even as something in his mind is screaming at him_ no, this is wrong.

_Felix brandishes his sword, swinging it forward and pushing the Lance of Ruin aside as he steps up close into Sylvain’s space, and he realizes he’s not wearing armor—he’s just wearing a loose shirt and pants. “Sorry, Sylvain. You’ll die first,” Felix whispers, and all at once his sword has transformed into a dagger and he plunges it into Sylvain’s chest, twisting it up and past his ribcage and into his heart and—_

Sylvain wakes with a start, his eyes snapping open in the dim light of morning in his tent.

“Sylvain!” he hears Mercedes say, her normally sweet voice taking on a note of annoyance as this is clearly not the first time she’s said his name.

“Wha—?” he mumbles, sitting up slowly as he feels his heart rate slow from the abrupt end of his dream. _What a strange dream,_ he thinks, then suddenly remembers, “Felix?” he asks, looking over to Mercedes, where she is standing just inside the tent.

She nods. “He’ll be alright,” she says, sighing. “You saved his life. I’m sure he’ll be very grateful when he wakes up, which should be soon.”

“Can I—” the words catch in his throat, and he clears his throat, tries again. “Can I see him?”

She smiles softly. “I’m sure he would welcome the company.” A look of anxiety crosses her features when he immediately stands and makes for the entrance, and he pauses.

“What?” he asks, feeling the knot of worry tighten in his stomach yet again.

“It’s...well, there are a few things, honestly,” she says, walking with him out of the tent and across camp. “I think you’d better talk to the professor. They asked me to come get you.” She motions to the tent where he can see Byleth and Dimitri standing just inside the main opening. “I’ll be in the infirmary when you’re finished,” she says, leaving him at the entrance of the tent.

Sylvain enters, catching the tail end of a conversation between the professor and Dimitri, “...to head to Fhirdiad,” the professor says, their face as impassive as ever.

“I agree, and the Margr—Ah, Sylvain!” Dimitri says, looking up as Sylvain walks forward slowly. Dimitri seems to have changed overnight—the circles under his eyes are gone, and he actually makes eye contact with Sylvain, his gaze finding Sylvain’s pleasantly, rather than with the haunted look that Sylvain has become so accustomed to. “It’s good to see you.”

Sylvain’s brow furrows with confusion at the sudden change in his friend. “Um…hey, your highness,” he says. “Is everything okay? Mercie said—” and then he pauses, because he’s actually not quite sure _what_ Mercedes even said, just that he should talk to Byleth and Dimitri.

Byleth sighs, their usually impassive demeanor slipping into something resembling sadness, Sylvain thinks. “Rodrigue is dead,” they say, simply.

Sylvain blinks, shocked. “Oh.” His mind jumps to Felix, asleep in the infirmary, sleeping without the knowledge that his father is dead. It makes his stomach turn unpleasantly.

Dimitri powers on ahead, apparently having regained the ability to make eye contact with his friends, but still socially awkward as ever. “It would be…beneficial if you would write to your father and notify the Margravate of the situation. Frankly, we could use his military support as we plan our march on Fhirdiad. Our supplies are running low.”

Sylvain is confused, still. All this for a simple letter home? “Okay, I’ll draft a letter as soon as—”

Byleth cuts him off. “There is one other thing,” they say, sounding almost nervous for once. Sylvain turns his gaze to them, and they speak. “Your father cannot know that Felix is alive.”

Sylvain thinks he could cut the tension in the room with a knife, if he had one. Dimitri has gone back to pointedly avoiding his stare, and Byleth shifts from one foot to the other, the equivalent of sweating bullets for anyone else. He knows that war requires them all to be less sentimental than usual, but this just feels disrespectful. “Uh, I’m sure you have your reasons, professor, but can I ask what they are?” An uncomfortable thought pokes at the back of Sylvain’s mind, something he’s not willing to look at quite yet, but he brushes it aside.

The other two are silent for a moment, then Dimitri speaks, still not looking directly at him. “I doubt the Margrave will take it lightly that the rightful heir of Fraldarius has spent the past five years drawing his sword for the enemy.”

The uncomfortable feeling in the back of Sylvain’s mind rears its head, and something in Sylvain whispers _You know it’s true._ Still, Sylvain freezes at his words, staring at Dimitri until they sink in completely. “You think Felix has been fighting for the Empire?” He looks from Byleth back to Dimitri, and the look of compassion on the latter’s face alone is enough to make him feel sick, much less the idea of Felix working with Edelgard in her pointless war against the church.

“I encountered him on the battlefield yesterday,” Dimitri says, quiet. “I remember—well, I remember attacking and killing him; he was distracted by something. He must have survived somehow.”

The ghost of the healing magic Sylvain had used yesterday rushes through his system, and he shudders at the memory of just barely clinging to Felix’s life, his tears dripping onto the other man’s face. Felix’s words from yesterday come back to him, from when he was on death’s door and hallucinating. _I thought the boar really had killed me, and this is my punishment. To see him one last time before I die._ “So you’d have no problem killing not only your former classmates, but your childhood friends as well?” Sylvain asks, his voice raising in what has now become a rare display of emotion for him. “Would you have killed Ingrid, too? Or me?”

“Sylvain—” The professor starts, stepping forward, but Dimitri reaches out to hold them back.

“No, it’s alright. Please believe me when I say that I am deeply sorry, Sylvain, for that and for the way I have treated you of late. Rodrigue’s death has truly…” he trails off, seeming to see whatever or whomever he had been seeing before his apparent overnight change, then snaps back to himself. “I deeply regret my actions, I know that words are only so much, but please take them for what they are.” He bows, speaking his next words to the grass under their feet. “I understand if you cannot accept this, though.”

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Dimitri—” he starts and forces down the feelings that are threatening to come up in that sentence. He averts his gaze, preferring to stare over the top of Byleth’s head into the back of the tent. “I’ll leave it out of my letter, but we’ll need to tell him eventually. I agree that he won’t like the threat to his new joined territory, but I’m sure there will be a way to make this work in our favor.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says, after a moment, looking up to meet Sylvain’s eyes. “I will not forget this, Sylvain.”

Sylvain nods his head in return and makes to leave when Byleth interrupts him, a note of trepidation on their voice. “Ah, Sylvain, there is _one_ more thing,” they say.

He turns back, an eyebrow raised, silently asking them to go on.

“All of this said, we should keep an eye on Felix,” they say. “We aren’t sure what his intentions are in coming here.”

“I don’t think—” Sylvain bites back the rest of his criticism, realizing it’s actually a fair concern, if Felix actually has been fighting for the Empire for the past five years, which is unfortunately beginning to sound more and more likely. His presence as an enemy in a Kingdom war camp would certainly cause problems. He sighs. “Okay,” he says. “But I want to talk to him first, before either of you.”

—

Sylvain excuses himself from the tent with Byleth and Dimitri as soon as they’ve worked out the details of the letter he will write to his father, which he will send as soon as they strike camp and return to the monastery later that day. Once he makes it out of the tent, he practically runs to the infirmary, where Mercedes catches him outside the entrance.

“Sylvain!” she says, looking harried. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Is Felix—” he starts but is interrupted by Mercedes practically pushing him into the tent. They’re the only ones in the tent, the Kingdom army having suffered few losses in yesterday’s battles save Rodrigue. Sylvain can see Felix, Ingrid, and Dedue from across the tent, seemingly restraining Felix where he is visibly struggling against their hold.

“He’s been asking for you,” she says, directing him to the cot where Felix had been yesterday. Sylvain tries to ignore the way that makes his heart clench, then he takes in the scene in front of him.

On the cot, Felix is sitting upright, looking remarkably better and more alive than he had yesterday—thank the Goddess—Sylvain notes. However, Dedue and Ingrid are still on either side of him, holding him back as he struggles in an attempt to get out of the bed.

“Get off!” he yells, pushing back against their hold on him, but Ingrid and Dedue hold him fast, forcing him back down onto the cot.

“Felix,” Dedue says, his voice like one you would use to calm a wild animal. “You need to wait here.”

“I just want—” he starts, but then his eyes catch on where Sylvain is standing, frozen, about two cots away from him, and the fight leaves him immediately. Ingrid and Dedue look up and seem relieved to see him.

“Finally,” Ingrid says, rolling her eyes. “I was about to send Mercedes to go get you _again_.”

Sylvain doesn’t say anything, feeling words caught in his throat, still staring at Felix on the cot in front of him. Felix who is _alive_ and staring right back at him like they’re the only two people in the entire camp. His blood-soaked clothes from yesterday have been replaced by a fresh shirt and pants, both slightly too large for him. The shirt hangs loose around his neck, unlaced, and showing a hint of collarbone and shoulder that Sylvain has seen in his dreams for years. Sylvain’s eyes latch onto Felix’s chest, his neck, his jaw, his mouth, his eyes, his hair loose around his face, and he feels Felix returning the intensity of his stare.

“…Right,” Ingrid says, probably to Dedue. “I don’t think we’re needed here anymore, Dedue.” Sylvain is vaguely aware of them leaving the tent and Ingrid murmuring something to Mercedes at the entrance, then they’re alone.

Sylvain takes a step closer to Felix, and suddenly Felix is up and meeting him halfway, his hands coming up to rest on Sylvain’s forearms. Their eyes lock, and Sylvain is struck again by how _short_ Felix’s hair is, especially since it still isn’t tied back. Felix squeezes his forearms just slightly, and Sylvain exhales heavily, finally speaking.

“Are you sure you should you be up?” He starts to look over his shoulder to where he last saw Mercedes, but--

“Shut up,” Felix cuts him off, hauling him in by the arms and crushing their mouths together.

Sylvain is delighted to find that the years have done nothing for their height difference as he leans down into the kiss, his hands winding into Felix’s hair to pull him closer and tilt his head back. The kiss is bruising, all open mouthed, desperate, with teeth nipping at Sylvain’s lower lip and fingers digging into the muscles of his forearms as Felix clings to him, then blunt nails raking down his back as Felix works a hand under his shirt, then stumbling steps as Felix pushes him towards an empty cot.

Sylvain pulls back from the kiss and groans as Felix pushes him down onto the cot, then barely has time to whisper a quiet _what the fuck, Felix_ , before the other man is climbing into his lap, bracketing his legs with his knees, and pressing more kisses to his jaw, his neck, the juncture between his shoulder and neck. Sylvain’s hands find Felix’s hips, then one wraps around to his back and the other to his neck; he winds his fingers into Felix’s loose hair again, reveling in the feeling of it against his skin, then in the soft sound that Felix makes when he tugs on it, using his leverage to capture Felix’s mouth in another kiss, softer this time.

Felix fucking _whines_ when Sylvain pulls back from the kiss, panting, to press their foreheads together. He can feel the other man breathing heavily under his hands, and he chuckles when Felix tries to press forward into another kiss, but Sylvain moves his head to the side at the last second. Felix doesn’t seem to care, kissing and biting at a spot on his jawline, which makes it exceedingly difficult for Sylvain to force out his next words. There will definitely be a mark there later, and he’s not sure how he’s going to explain that. He’s not sure he wants to think of an explanation other than _Felix is somehow alive_.

“Fe,” he says, pulling back on the other man’s hair, but this just seems to encourage him more. “Felix,” he says more firmly, bringing a hand up to push them apart, just enough so that Felix can’t latch onto his jaw anymore. “I need to talk to you,” he says, his eyes catching on Felix’s swollen, kiss-bitten mouth, then his pupils, which are dilated so there’s just the smallest ring of gold around them. Fuck, this is going to be difficult. “I think we should,” he trails off, maneuvering them so that Felix is no longer on his lap and there’s at least a foot of space between them, trying to ignore the way Felix still clings to him as they part.

“There,” he says, finally. “Do you think you can keep to yourself for a little bit?” he asks, his voice light, teasing.

Felix blushes, and says, “No,” but he stays where he is on the cot. Sylvain watches his eyes drop to Sylvain’s mouth and has to hold himself back from closing the distance between them again. He groans loudly and drags the palms of his hands over his face, shuddering when he realizes he can smell the scent of his hair on his hands.

They sit in silence for a quiet moment, just staring at each other, before Felix looks away, breaking both the stare and the silence. “Well?”

Sylvain blinks, confused, and Felix narrows his eyes where he’s looking at him again. “You said you wanted to talk, so _talk_.”

“I—” Sylvain stumbles for what to say, waiting for his mind to begin working again after being essentially attacked _for the second time, what the fuck_ , by the man sitting opposite him. He cycles through all the things he wanted to say yesterday, finally settles on, “Felix, we… _I_ thought you were dead.”

Felix rolls his eyes, but nevertheless, he avoids eye contact as he responds. “ _Tch_.” He pushes air out through his teeth, making a dismissive noise. “Obviously I’m not.”

He doesn’t elaborate, so Sylvain continues. “Where were you?” he asks, quiet. The light tone of his voice has disappeared, replaced by one he’s become accustomed to over the past five years: one of defeat, of depression, of mourning.

Felix is quiet for what feels like hours, looking anywhere but at Sylvain. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, and Sylvain can just barely hear him over the bustle of the war camp being stricken outside the canvas walls of the tent where they sit. He continues, still refusing to meet Sylvain’s eyes, “I told myself I would do that once more, if I ever saw you again,” he says, finally turning his gaze to his own hands, which rest in his lap. He’s quiet for a minute before speaking again, hesitant. “She’s insane,” he starts, and Sylvain realizes he’s talking about Edelgard. “I knew I was going to die, if not in battle, then she’d kill me herself. It seems right that you all mourned me. Sometimes I think I already d--” he cuts himself off, still staring at his hands, which are now flexed into fists. Sylvain thinks maybe Felix is still a little delusional, as he was on the battlefield yesterday.

He remembers what Felix had said yesterday, _Or maybe I’m already dead._ His heart aches for the pain he sees on Felix’s face. “Why?” he asks, almost whispering into the thick air between them. He knows Felix understands what he means, _Why did you leave? Why did you fight for her?_

“I had to,” is the only response he gets.

“Bullshit,” Sylvain speaks without thinking. “What does that even mean, Felix?”

Felix bristles, and he snaps his eyes up to Sylvain’s, the anger there making the gold in them glint in the dim light. “It means _I had to do this_ , Sylvain. Not for you, not for my old man, not for the _boar_ ,” he spits the name out, “I had… I had to do it for myself.” He knows he hasn’t seen Felix for five years, but he thinks he can still tell when his friend is lying. And that statement sounded like a half-truth, at best.

Still, he finds himself thinking selfishly, _But what about what you would do for me? Did I mean nothing to you?_ and almost says it, ties to, but he can’t force the words past the lump in his throat. He’s brought back to his dream from the night before, of Felix plunging that dagger deep into his heart, and he’s finally able to speak after minutes of deafening silence. “If it had been me, on the battlefield, would you have done it?” he asks, his voice devoid of any emotion.

“What?” Felix snaps, so much anger poured into the single syllable.

“If we had met on the battlefield, would you have killed me?”

“What? Sylvain, no, I—”

“How can you be sure?” he asks, speaking over Felix’s response. “You _had_ to join Edelgard, so how do I know you wouldn’t have—”

“Because I came back because of you!” Felix shouts, surprisingly loud in the quiet of the empty tent. “Because I’m _here_ because of you,” he adds softly, in the quiet shock of his first statement.

Sylvain sighs, his hands coming up to scrub over his face. He doesn’t know where to go from here, how to deal with this. It feels like his world has come back, only to have it ripped away again. Just another thing the Empire has taken from him, he thinks bitterly. “Felix—” he starts, then trails off, unsure of where he’s going with it, and instead just stares at the other man.

Felix seems to understand what he means, despite the confusion swirling in Sylvain’s thoughts. “I know.” He’s quiet for another few moments, then says, “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry.” Sylvain isn’t sure if he means the kiss they just shared, or the ones from that night all those years ago.

“Don’t—don’t apologize,” he says. “I just, you were dead for years. I think I need some time to process…everything.” _That you turned your back on me, on us,_ Sylvain thinks but doesn’t say. “Come on,” he says, standing from the cot, “we should help get ready to head back to the monastery.”

\--

They strike camp and are marching back to Garreg Mach by midday. Sylvain typically keeps to the front during marches, preferring to ride next to Mercedes or Ashe, but for this march he keeps to the back, keeping an eye on where Felix is walking alone, snapping at anyone who dares even look at him. Most of their former classmates are steering clear of him--no doubt they’ve heard that Felix has been fighting for Edelgard for the past five years--the one exception being Dimitri, who appears to be talking to Felix with the same amount of success one would have with talking to a brick wall, but Sylvain notices the tiniest signs that Felix is listening: the tilt of his head, the quirk at the edge of his mouth.

When they arrive back at the monastery, dusk has just fallen, and Sylvain is exhausted. Dimitri makes a brief speech once they’re inside the walls, calling for a war council the next day with the generals in the council room at two hours after sunrise. As they are all dispersing to their various places throughout the monastery, Sylvain sees Dimitri catch Felix by the elbow and say something to him, his voice low enough that it doesn’t carry across the length of the entrance hall. Felix jerks his arm away and spits, “ _Obviously_ ,” before storming off in the direction of the dormitories--an armored soldier peels off to follow him.

He turns to a soldier remaining in the hall, who has been next to him and also saw the exchange. “What’s that about?” he asks, stretching his arms out behind his head in a display of false indifference.

The soldier pauses and gives him a confused look that Sylvain thinks means, _shouldn’t a war general already know this?_ “The meeting tomorrow is to discuss Lord Fraldarius’s...” she pauses for a moment, trying to think of the best word. “His sentencing,” she decides on, after a moment.

“Ah,” Sylvain says, nodding his head. “Thank you.” Then Dimitri would have been reminding Felix that his presence is not needed at the meeting. Sylvain involuntarily winces at how awkward that conversation surely was. Felix had defected from the Kingdom’s army, and they were all taught that the punishment for defection was death from birth.

As he is walking to his room, he passes Felix’s room, as always, and pauses outside the door. Should he say something? He feels like everything was said before, in the infirmary tent, but he wishes he could have left them on a better note. He hesitates, his hand over the door, before dropping his hand back to his side and retreating back to his own room for the night. Pathetic.

Walking into the war council the next morning feels like he’s walking to a funeral; he knows the punishment for deserting the King’s army, it’s taught to them all at a young age, and it’s unlikely that Felix’s execution will not be on the table simply because he is a personal friend of the King’s. His allies’ faces are similarly grim, and Byleth greets Sylvain with an unusually clipped, “Good morning,” even for them.

“We begin with a most important matter,” Dimitri starts once everyone is in their seats, “of attending to the matter of desertion from the King’s army by the heir to the former House Fraldarius.

“The typical punishment for desertion is death,” Dimitri continues, and Sylvain feels his heart sink. “Which I have decided not to pursue in this case.” A shocked murmur goes through the room at this statement. 

Gilbert rises to his feet. “Your Highness, is that wise?” he asks, his hands spread wide on the table in front of him. “He is an Imperial general. He could be reporting back to Edelgard as we speak.”

Dimitri sighs. “I have posted a guard with Felix and spoken to him personally,” he says, calming Gilbert with an outstretched hand. “I do not believe him to be a threat.” The next breath that Sylvain takes in feels like the first real breath he’s had in years. Felix will live, thank the Goddess.

“However,” Dimitri continues, “this does not mean all is forgiven. As I have learned with many of you,” at this, he meets Sylvain’s eyes briefly, “the road to forgiveness is difficult and winding, and we cannot be expected to just go on as if nothing has changed. In response to this, Felix has been stripped of his title and claim to Fraldarius lands. Due to the recent merge between Gautier and Fraldarius territory, inheritance for this territory falls to the Margrave Gautier and heir, Sylvain.

“Additionally, Felix will be confined to the monastery while we are at war, and he will not be informed of any war or battle specifics by myself or others,” on the word _others_ , he looks to Sylvain with a sharp glance. “I want to be clear, he is not a prisoner of war or otherwise. I discussed these terms with Felix yesterday, and he agreed that they were acceptable. He is here because he chose to be, and for no other reason.” He looks around the room, then nods to Annette, who has her hand raised cautiously in question. “Yes, Annette.”

“Would he like visitors?” she asks, and a small smile flits across Dimitri’s face.

“I’m sure he would be happy to see you, Annette, or any of you,” he says, bowing his head shortly before turning back to address the entire group. “Now, let’s discuss this month’s battle,” he says, returning to his seat as Byleth smiles, and begins explaining their assault on Fhirdiad.

The meeting drags on, especially when Sylvain can barely force himself to focus on the battle plans being drawn up in front of him. His mind drifts to Felix and their discussion yesterday, and once again Sylvain is conflicted. He understands Felix’s reasoning for leaving on some level; his friend has always been fiercely independent and unwilling to listen to others.

But on the other hand, it hurts Sylvain deeply to know that Felix just _left_ with no thought towards how it would affect the rest of the Blue Lions. To how it would affect _him_. He must have known what he was doing, Sylvain refuses to believe that Felix is _that_ unaware of how his actions affect others, especially when those others are Sylvain.

Suddenly, as if it can hear his thoughts, the door behind Sylvain bursts open and none other than Felix storms into the council room, his guard rushing after him and saying, “Sir, please, you can’t--” but failing to hold him back.

Felix’s hair is falling out of where it has been tied back into a short ponytail and his sword is drawn at his side. He looks murderous in a way that Sylvain has never seen. “You bastard! Prepare yourself you damn boar!” he yells, raising the sword to point at Dimitri, and Sylvain suddenly thinks that the King’s earlier words of _I do not believe him to be a threat_ will not be holding true for much longer, so he springs up from his seat and blocks Felix’s path, his hands raised in surrender. Felix narrows his eyes at him and levels the sword at his chest, a challenge on his face.

“Hey Felix,” he says, smiling uneasily at the other man. “Think we could take this outside?”

“Stand aside, Sylvain. This is between me and the boar.” He’s breathing heavily, and Sylvain can see him calculating his next move, so he moves without thinking. He steps forward and catches the tip of the blade with his hand, pushing it down and wincing as he feels the sharp metal dig into the flesh of his hand.

“Felix, come on,” he says. Behind him, he hears the scraping of chairs against the wooden floor as Gilbert no doubt readies himself to take Felix down in the event that he makes it further into the room, which Sylvain isn’t planning to allow. He sees Felix loosen his grip on the sword for a split second as blood drips from Sylvain’s palm onto the floor, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to step even closer, wrapping his good hand around the hilt of the sword and tugging it out of Felix’s grasp. He throws it to the floor behind him, out of Felix’s reach, and moves his good hand up to the other man’s bicep, gently turning him and walking him out of the room.

Predictably, Felix fights against Sylvain’s stronger grasp, but he stops abruptly when Sylvain whispers, “Please, Felix,” barely against his ear, and pushes him gently towards the door. They leave the war council room and shut the door on the still silence of their friends and allies behind them, and Sylvain walks them downstairs and outside, Felix’s guard trailing behind them warily.

Once outside, Felix shakes his arm loose from Sylvain’s grip with a grumble and walks across the courtyard in the direction of the training grounds, not checking to see if either Sylvain or his guard are following.

Sylvain rolls his eyes, jogging after his friend. “Felix, wait up!” he calls. He reaches the training grounds just as the door slams shut behind Felix and he sighs, resting his forehead against the wood of the large doors. He hears the guard catch up with him, panting in her armor, and Sylvain turns to the woman.

“Hey, do you mind staying out here?” he asks, rubbing the back of his neck in apprehension. “I’d kind of like to talk to him alone.”

As much as she can with his helmet and visor pulled down, the guard appears nervous, shifting between armored feet. “Well…”

“Hey, don’t worry about me,” he says. “Felix wouldn’t lay a hand on me, I promise.”

She seems to come to a decision, nodding. “I will break down this door if necessary,” she says, moving to the side of the door and taking up a post there.

Sylvain grins. “I would expect no less. Thanks,” he says over his shoulder as he pushes the door open with his uninjured hand and jogs into the square sand pit, where Felix is turned with his back to the entrance, practicing his hand-to-hand combat on a straw-filled training dummy.

He watches, unabashed for a minute or two before speaking. “Hey, you wanna explain what that was about?” he asks, stepping forward until he’s just out of punching range. He’s had enough injuries for one day, he thinks, wincing at the throbbing in his injured hand, which is still dripping blood at this point. He should probably take care of that soon.

“My father is dead,” he says, throwing another punch at the training dummy, and Sylvain can see the seams at the neck of the dummy beginning to tear from the strain of holding itself together. “Sacrificed himself for the boar, the fool.”

 _Oh, right_. In the stress of the past two days, Sylvain had almost forgotten about Rodrigue and his sacrifice for Dimitri. “Felix, I--”

“And I am no longer the Fraldarius heir,” he says, spinning to fix Sylvain with his glare, “but _imagine_ my surprise when the boar told me that my inheritance, or lack thereof, is no longer significant because _you_ are set to inherit in my stead, and have been for the past four years.”

The legitimate anger and bitterness in Felix’s voice shocks Sylvain--he’d never thought Felix cared so much about his nobility or inheritance; he’d bemoaned the pointlessness of his future on many occasions when they had been at the academy. “I thought you would be happy to be free of the responsibility,” he responds, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Felix makes a sound of frustration, turning his gaze to the sky. “You thought _I_ would be happy that _you_ \--” he cuts himself off again, stepping into Sylvain’s space and meeting his gaze completely. “You really are _such_ an idiot.” There is genuine heat behind the words, and for a moment Sylvain tenses, preparing for a hit he’s sure is coming, but when Felix drops his gaze to Sylvain’s bleeding hand and takes it in his own, the touch over the cut is soft and gentle.

Sylvain breathes out a careful exhale, then inhales. He feels Felix’s touch on his fingers and the back of his hand as he examines the gash with more detail than he thinks he’s felt anything before in his life. The look on his face had been one that Sylvain recognized--it was the look Felix had worn five years ago, and again yesterday in the infirmary tent, before they’d lost themselves in each other’s embrace. Sylvain isn’t sure he’s ready for a third encounter. He’s not sure he’ll _survive_ a third encounter, with the way his heart is threatening to beat out of his chest with Felix just caressing his palm tenderly, then wiping the blood away with the untucked edge of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Felix says, as he finishes wiping the blood from Sylvain’s hand and examines the cut deeper, looking for signs of infection.

Sylvain laughs, attempting to break the tension that’s sprung up between them. “I feel like I’ve heard you apologize more in the past two days than I’ve ever heard before.”

Felix gives him a look, then moves away to rummage in a chest along the edge of the training ground. Sylvain misses the warmth of Felix next to him immediately and he shivers, despite the sun warming the sand around them. Felix returns with a bandage, which he wraps around Sylvain’s hand expertly, tucking the end back into itself. “I’m serious,” he says. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Suddenly, Sylvain’s not sure if they’re talking about his injured hand or the fact that Felix left and has only returned after five years of fighting for his literal sworn enemy. He pulls his hand back from where it’s still clasped in Felix’s fingers and stares at a rack of lances over his shoulder. “You did, though,” he says, his voice just barely shaking.

“I know,” Felix says, just as quiet, and when Sylvain looks back to his face, his eyes are searching Sylvain’s face for something. What it is, or if he finds it, Sylvain doesn’t know, because with one final searing look at Felix, he tears his gaze away and turns away, walking back to his room without another word.

\--

Over the next month, Sylvain purposely avoids Felix, not wanting to address the abrupt end to their last conversation. He frequents places he knows Felix will avoid, spending most of his time with Dimitri or wandering around the fishing docks when he isn’t busy training with Byleth or leading seminars in dark magic and lancing to his allies.

They reclaim Fhirdiad at the end of Harpstring Moon, and the celebration that follows that night in Fhirdiad, in the royal palace, is one for the ages. After what must be his eighth serving of wine, Sylvain wanders off from the great hall where they have set up their festivities to wander through the familiar halls, remembering his childhood visiting the palace, of chasing Dimitri, Ingrid, and Felix through these halls. He wishes Felix could be here to see the castle again, and for a moment Sylvain forgets that the only reason he isn’t is because he is confined to the monastery, not because he is laying cold in the ground, somewhere unknown.

Before he really knows where he’s heading, Sylvain finds himself standing outside of his old guest quarters. He pushes the door open, stumbles inside and to the old bed, ignoring the dust he kicks up as he falls face-first into the mattress. Clearly his old room hadn’t been used by the Imperial army that had been occupying the palace.

Laying there, he is struck by how much easier his life was when he was a child. He frowns at the thought, shaking his head. No, Miklan hadn’t made his life very easy. But at least the emotions had been easier to deal with and understand, he thinks, as he tries to put a name to the feelings he has towards being back in his old room and can’t quite figure out what it is he’s experiencing. It’s not nostalgia, it feels worse than that.

His thoughts are interrupted as the door creaks open and Ingrid pokes her head through the crack in the door. “Hey, there you are. His highness wants us all to set up in one hallway in case something happens,” she says, leaning against the doorframe and considering him. “You doing alright?”

“‘M drunk,” he says, closing his eyes and turning his head against the musty pillow of his old bed.

“Yep, sure are,” she says, coming into the room and letting the door close behind her. She stands next to the bed, working a hand under Sylvain’s chest and forcing him upright. Sylvain thinks it’s unfair that she holds her liquor so much better than the rest of them. “Come on, let’s go.” She pushes him sideways so his feet hit the floor, and she slings one of his arms over her shoulders, pulling him up and taking on half of his weight as he sways into her.

“Whoa,” Sylvain says as the world spins, his head seeming to move faster than his eyes can keep up with. “Li’l dizzy, Ingrid.”

“Yep, that happens. Let’s go, you can pass out once we get to the right hallway.” She steers both of them out of the room and down the hallway, back the way Sylvain thinks he came.

Sylvain thinks they’re walking for at least an hour, although the small reasonable part of him that’s left knows it can’t be more than two or three minutes, when they arrive at another hallway, this one bustling with activity that makes Sylvain’s head swim with noise. He groans, burying his head into Ingrid’s neck. “Ugh, it’s loud Ingrid. Make it stop,” he says, his mouth full of her hair. He spits it out gracefully, and Ingrid laughs.

“You _so_ owe me for this, Sylvain,” she says, maneuvering them into an empty room at the end of the hall and depositing Sylvain unceremoniously onto the bed. “There, now go to sleep.” Sylvain closes his eyes, shuffling against the sheets on the bed, and makes a quiet noise of displeasure. There’s something he wants, but he can’t--

“Ingrid?” he asks, his eyes still closed.

“What, Sylvain?” she asks. She sounds farther away than before, like she’s standing by the door.

“I miss him.” _Fuck_. “I mean, missed. He’s here. Not here, but like--” he feels himself start to ramble and stops short, bringing an arm up to cover his closed eyes in the crook of his elbow.

Ingrid is quiet for so long he thinks that she might have left and he’s just experienced a drunk emotion alone, again, but she sighs, quietly, from wherever she’s standing. “You should tell him, then.”

He considers her advice, squinting his eyes to remember his interactions with Felix from the past month. They haven’t been great, but-- “I think he knows,” he says, and there’s no response. When he finally opens his eyes, he finds that he’s alone.

\--

The thing is, Sylvain doesn’t feel like he _can_ talk to Felix anymore, much less tell him how he feels, considering how their last two extended conversations have gone. Their interactions over the past month have been limited to catching Felix’s eye in the dining hall and offering a small, cautious smile, and Felix attending his seminars in dark magic, snapping at anyone who questions his presence in the back row, not taking notes but studiously watching Sylvain’s every word. Every time Felix has tried to actually _say_ something to him, Sylvain has mumbled an awkward joke, or just not responded, before walking in the exact opposite direction he’d been going before Felix had spoken to him.

He wants to talk to him, wants to be friends with him again, but every time he sees Felix, even just across the marketplace, he is reminded that he left without a thought about any of them. Without a thought for him. It feels selfish, but he wishes that Felix had at least _talked_ to him about it, or maybe asked him to come along, back when he’d deserted. Maybe things would be different now if he had.

The night of his birthday, just after their return from Fhirdiad, Annette and Mercedes corner him in the dining hall and force him to come to Mercedes’s room, where they have baked him a collection of pastries for his birthday in what Sylvain thinks is the kindest gesture he’s experienced in five years.

They’ve been silent for a time, most of the pastries eaten, and his mind is still spinning from the kindness his friends have shown him. He feels alone with his thoughts in the quiet of the room despite the presence of Annette and Mercedes, and he speaks softly without thinking. “Do you think that Felix knows I love him?” Sylvain thinks he can see the words hanging in the dim lamplight of the room.

He almost thinks they haven’t heard him when there’s no response for nearly five minutes, but Mercedes clears her throat, and Sylvain waits. He knows that Ingrid hasn’t told a soul, but neither Annette nor Mercedes react at all to this news. “Well, have you told him?” Annette asks, tilting her head and leaning back against the wall behind Mercedes’s bed. The movement pushes her deeper into Mercedes’s side, and Mercedes accepts this movement like it’s been done hundreds of times.

“No,” Sylvain whines. “But he’s got to know, right? I mean, we’ve had--” he cuts off, feeling his face flush at the memory from five years ago.

Mercedes is quiet as she considers the statement. “You should talk to him,” she says, encouraging. “Communication is important for any relationship--it’s the only thing that has worked for Annie and me. Nothing would have happened if I hadn’t told her how I felt.”

Sylvain looks between the two of them pressed together on Mercedes’s bed, feeling like his worldview has totally changed at the knowledge that two of his oldest friends are _together_. Maybe that’s something to address later. His thoughts can’t seem to stay off Felix, though, because the next thing he says is, “I want to talk to him, but I feel like I can’t. Every time I try I just--he left,” he finishes lamely, laying on his back and staring dejectedly back up at the ceiling of the dormitory room.

“Well, I mean…” Annette starts, then trails off for a moment. “He did come back,” she finishes, considerate. Sylvain almost thinks she’s done, but she keeps going after a moment. “I was angry at him for a while, too. It felt like he had abandoned us, but what really matters is that he came back, right? That he’s here now.”

Sylvain considers it. Felix had come back. And he had said that he came back because of Sylvain. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?

“But what about _me_ ,” is what comes out eventually, the hurt slipping into his voice without his permission. _Selfish,_ he thinks. “He didn’t--he didn’t talk to me, he just left.”

His two friends are quiet for a long minute, then Mercedes finally speaks. “Sylvain, I think you should tell _Felix_ that, not us.”

Sylvain scrubs a hand down his face, groaning. “Okay.” He surprises himself with the answer. He sits up, suddenly feeling determined. “I’m, um...should I go now?” He turns to where Mercedes and Annette are sitting on the bed, giving each other an amused look before looking back to him.

“The sooner the better!” Mercedes chimes, a clear dismissal, and Sylvain shoots them both an awkward smile before heading up to the second floor of dormitories and down nearly the entire hall to Felix’s door, his heart pounding the entire way. He hesitates with his hand poised to knock, his nerve suddenly leaving him, but the door opens under his hand, and Felix is standing there, looking as shocked as Sylvain feels for half a second before he schools his features back into his usual tense nonchalance.

“Um,” Sylvain starts, the words that had been running through his mind a moment ago suddenly leaving his mind blank.

“Did you need something?” Felix asks, still standing in the doorway, the door barely open.

Sylvain manages to get his thoughts together. “I need to talk to you,” he says, hooking his hand around the back of his neck and grinning uneasily.

“Okay, so talk,” Felix says, shifting to lean his hip against the door jamb.

“No, I mean,” Sylvain sighs, frustrated. “Can I come in?”

Felix pauses, then steps back from the door, opening it wider so Sylvain can step inside. The room is cluttered, in the way that Felix’s spaces are, with his things lying haphazardly about the room, and instead of causing the level of anxiety it used to, Sylvain feels much calmer at the sight. It feels nice, lived in.

He steps inside and sits on the edge of the bed, watching Felix shut the door and come stand on the complete opposite side of the room from him, his arms crossed.

“So?” Felix asks, his shoulders hunched up close to his ears. He refuses to look at Sylvain.

“I…” Sylvain starts, looking down at his lap. “I missed you.” Felix doesn’t look over, so Sylvain continues. “I don’t think I told you that, during any of our--talks.” He hesitates on the word, not sure if it’s right for the total of two actual and hundreds of stilted, awkward conversations they’ve had since Felix’s return.

“You didn’t,” Felix says, his voice soft from where he’s still staring out the dark window and at the lantern burning on his windowsill.

“I wanted to apologize for how I’ve been acting,” Sylvain continues. “Annette said...she told me that what was important was that you came back, not that you left, and I’m trying to work with that.” Felix looks somehow even more tense where he’s standing, but he still takes an aborted step towards Sylvain, their eyes finally meeting before Sylvain goes on. “But still... Felix, I need to know _why_. Why you left. If we’re ever going to get back to...something normal.”

Felix freezes, his eyes locked on Sylvain. “I told you, it was something I had to do,” he says, guarded.

“But what about me?” he says, blurts out really. It sounds selfish, pathetic now that he hears it out loud. Like he’s a child begging for his father’s favor again. As soon as he says the words, he can feel the tears spilling over and down his face. He thinks this is the first time he’s cried in almost 5 years. “You left _me_ ,” he adds, almost to himself, closing his eyes as the tears continue to fall.

He hears a rush of something, then Felix’s hands are cupping his face and his thumbs are smoothing over the tear tracks, and Sylvain feels somehow more pathetic, like he’s thrown a tantrum and Felix is indulging him to avoid embarrassment. He makes to pull away, suddenly wanting to run from this level of vulnerability, but Felix is stronger than Sylvain’s desperate struggles, and he stays put.

“Sylvain,” Felix says, soft. “Look at me.”

Sylvain opens his eyes and has to hold back a gasp because Felix is _there_ , hovering close enough to him that he can see every eyelash, every fleck of gold in his eyes, the tiny scar through his eyebrow from when they were children.

“I’m not good at this,” Felix starts, his hands moving from where they are cupping Sylvain’s face to rest on his shoulders, “but if you think for one moment that--” he cuts himself off, looking away for a moment and making a noise of frustration, “that how I feel about you was not part of my decision to leave, then you truly are an idiot.”

Sylvain is still crying, but he manages to mumble out a “What?”, the word coming out stuffy.

“I left because Edelgard wanted a world without crests, or corrupt nobles, and I wanted you to--” He groans again, frustrated, and rests his head against his hand on Sylvain’s shoulder, continuing to speak from there. “Why can’t you just--I just, I wanted that for you, for you to live free from your father, with no crests or nobility. I wanted us to be--” he stops suddenly, going stiff. “I fought for myself, but it was for you, too,” he whispers, his lips catching on the fabric of Sylvain’s shirt.

Sylvain sniffs, moving until Felix looks at him again and searching his expression for something, but he’s not totally sure what yet. “Why?” he whispers into the space between them. Felix just looks at him, an expression on his face that Sylvain has never seen before. He doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare at him, and Sylvain asks again. “Why, Felix, why would you want that?”

Felix looks away, his hands tensing on Sylvain’s shoulders. “Because...Because, look, I’m not going to say this more than once, okay? I love you. I want you to be happy, even if it means I have to leave, or if Edelgard kills me.” He cuts his eyes back to Sylvain, a blush rising high on his cheeks as the admission hangs between them.

Sylvain blinks, stunned at the words. He feels his face break into a teary smile, and he brings a hand up to thumb at Felix’s jaw, then slides it back into his hair that’s still tied up and loosening the bun with his fingers. “You love me?” he asks, disbelieving in his voice.

“I already said I wouldn’t say it again, idiot,” Felix replies, and there’s a note of insecurity there that Sylvain desperately needs to push away, so he runs his thumb across the side of Felix’s face and pulls him in close, so they’re only a breath away.

“I love you, too,” he whispers against Felix’s mouth, still smiling. “I want you to be happy, too,” he says, and closes the gap between them, pressing a chaste kiss to Felix’s mouth.

He pulls back before the kiss can become too heated and just _looks_ at Felix, still standing in front of him, and so he pulls until Felix stumbles forward, landing awkwardly half in Sylvain’s lap and half on the bed next to him. Sylvain uses Felix’s momentum to pull them down fully onto the bed, so they’re laying face to face, with Sylvain’s hand cupping the side of Felix’s face and Felix’s arms wrapped around Sylvain’s neck.

The rest of Felix’s words process in Sylvain’s mind, and he frowns. “Fe, I--” he’s not sure how to go on, how to voice the thoughts swirling in his mind. “I just need one thing for me to be happy,” he says, searching Felix’s face to be sure he understands. “I just want you.”

“I had to try,” Felix replies, his hands fisting into Sylvain’s hair with tension. “I couldn’t just let you--let both of us go on like that.” He’s staring at a spot on the wall behind Sylvain, his eyes distant.

“Why did you come back?” The question comes out, unbidden, and Sylvain realizes he’s never really asked.

They’re silent, just staring at each other for a moment before Felix replies, still not meeting Sylvain’s eyes. “Edelgard promised a world without crests, and I wanted to fight for that. I saw how your father treated you, and I--I couldn’t live knowing that he would be able to continue treating you like that, so I left and joined Edelgard. She said that we fought the church for a world free from the horrors that crests had wreaked upon the Fódlan, but I think what she really wanted was a world without herself.

“She didn’t want to eliminate crests, she just wanted an excuse to act out her vendetta against those who wronged her. She murdered Bernadetta without a second thought--sacrificed her closest allies for a chance at striking the boar down, and I knew she would kill me, so I defected--broke the line to find Bernadetta, and that’s when Dimitri found me.” A shudder passes through his body at the memory, and Sylvain pulls him closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Shh, Fe, you don’t have to,” he whispers against his forehead.

“I didn’t even know you were there, but I thought _maybe_ ,” Felix whispers into Sylvain’s neck. “I thought I was dreaming.”

Sylvain hums, pulling back to press their foreheads together now. “I’m glad you came back.”

“Sylvain, you can’t...you won’t be able to escape it, any of it, now. Your father, your crest, your nobility. I have no claim to Fraldarius, so--”

Sylvain silences him with a kiss, pouring all his emotions into the press of their bodies against each other. “Fe, I don’t care,” he whispers against Felix’s mouth. “None of that matters.”

Felix makes a displeased noise between his teeth, but there’s no heat behind it. “You should care.”

“No,” Sylvain murmurs, pressing forward again to speak the words against the other man’s mouth. “Not when you’re here, when you came back. That’s all I need.”

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to resident fic enabler [birdie](https://mynameisbirdie.tumblr.com) who has never consumed a single piece of content for fe3h outside of what i have literally forced down her throat, who encouraged me with writing this fic and talked to me about it for literal hours, even though she had no idea what the fuck i was going on about!
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed my incredibly self-indulgent coping mechanism of a fic :)
> 
> you can find me on twitter: [kels_la](https://twitter.com/kels_la) and on tumblr: [fulltankawayfromfreedom](https://fulltankawayfromfreedom.tumblr.com)


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